“I think you should give him the chance to show you.”
Aidan nods, folds the paper back up, and tucks it in his pocket with care like he’s handling something precious.
“Mr. Paul?”
“Yeah.”
“If Dad can’t do all fourteen, can we do the leftover ones with you?”
I look at this kid with his folded list and hishopeful face and his stuffed elephant drying on the deck rail, and I realize I would do all fourteen twice. I would do them every Saturday for the rest of my life if he asked.
“Absolutely,” I say.
He grins. Punches my arm—the way he’s seen older kids do, too hard, slightly off-target—and runs out the door yelling something to Olson about hermit crab habitats.
I pick up my sandwich, put it down, then pick it up again.
Eat it without tasting a single bite.
Emma findsme in the dock office an hour later.
She’s carrying her binder—the wedding one, with the tabs and the shot lists and the hand-drawn diagrams. But she doesn’t open it. She sets it on the desk and sits in the chair across from me and pulls her knees up, which she does when she’s about to say something real instead of something logistical.
“Matt texted this morning,” she says. “His flight’s confirmed for Saturday. He booked a hotel in town.”
“Good.”
“He wants to take the kids to dinner Saturday night. Just him and them. No me.”
“How do you feel about that?”
She considers this. “Relieved. If he’s good with them—actually present, actually paying attention—then maybe this visit will be different. Maybe he’s growing up.”
“And if he’s not?”
“Then I handle it the way I always handle it. Put them to bed. Answer the questions. Tape the cracks back together.”
“You shouldn’t have to do that alone.”
She looks at me. The afternoon light is coming through the office window, catching the side of her face, turning her hair gold at the edges. Her beauty has nothing to do with the light and everything to do with the fact that she’s sitting in my office being brave about something that terrifies her.
“I’m not alone,” she says. “Not anymore.”
The office goes quiet. The kind of quiet that isn’t empty—the kind that’s full, that’s holding something between two people who aren’t ready to name it but both know it’s there.
“Paul.”
“Yeah.”
“When Matt comes—whatever happens—I needyou to know something.” She unfolds her legs and sits forward. “You’re not the backup plan. You’re not the consolation prize. You’re not the guy I’m settling for because my first choice didn’t work out.”
A lump forms in my throat, and I swallow past it. “Okay.”
“I mean it. Whatever Matt is or isn’t to those kids, whatever history we share—that’s separate. It has nothing to do with this.” She gestures between us in the space that’s been shrinking for months. “This is its own thing. And I need you to believe that.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.” She smiles. The real one that makes the fairy lights on her houseboat look dim by comparison.
